According to a major survey by the Pew Research Centre across 44 different countries, 80% of Bangladeshis support a free-market, trade-oriented system for our economy.
This was a higher figure than that reported in South Korea and was topped in this survey only by people in Vietnam.
Public opinion clearly believes that more open trade and foreign investment can help generate jobs and raise living standards. Bangladesh has a much higher approval level for trade and foreign investment than India and Pakistan, the two other South Asian countries studied in this research.
It is not perhaps a paradox that Bangladesh also stands at 173rd out of 189 states for ease of doing business in the World Bank and IFC’s Doing Business Report 2014, which is a disturbingly low ranking given the World Bank ranks our economy as the 57th biggest in the world.
Arguably, the public’s strong entrepreneurial instincts have been bolstered by their experience of how poorly state interference has often served the economy.
The way in which different governments waste taxpayer money in propping up poorly managed loss-making state-owned industries is of concern to all citizens.
We cannot afford our economy’s potential to be hindered in this way. The government needs to stop wasting funds on unproductive enterprises and cut the red tape, which means it takes twice as long to open a business in Bangladesh as in leading developed nations.
If Bangladesh’s economy is to develop as it needs to serve our growing population, the government must free the entrepreneurial instincts of the people.
